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IN DIVIDED UNITY
CRITICAL ISSUES IN
INDIGENOUS STUDIES

Jeffrey P. Shepherd and Myla Vicenti Carpio

SERIES EDITORS

ADVISORY BOARD
Hokulani Aikau
Jennifer Nez Denetdale
Eva Marie Garroutte
John Maynard
Alejandra Navarro-Smith
Gladys Tzul Tzul
Keith Camacho
Margaret Elizabeth Kovach
Vicente Diaz
 THERESA MCCARTHY

IN DIVIDED UNITY

Haudenosaunee Reclamation at Grand River

THE UNIVERSllY OF
ARIZONA PRESS
T U CSO N
The University of Arizona Press
www.uapress.arizona.edu

© 2016 The Arizona Board of Regents

All rights reserved. Published 2016

Printed in the United States of America

21 20 '9 18 17 16 6 5 4 3

Cover design by Leigh McDonald

Cover photos by Tracy Lynn Bomberry, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory

Publication of this book is made possible in part by funding from the Julian Park Fund, College of Arts
and Sciences, University at Buffalo, and by the proceeds of a permanent endowment created with the
assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McCarthy, Theresa, author.
Title: In divided unity: Haudenosaunee reclamation at Grand River / Theresa McCarthy.
Other titles: Critical issues in indigenous studies.
Description: Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2016.1 Series: Critical issues in indigenous
studies 1Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 20150385351 ISBN 9780816532599 (cloth: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Iroquois Indians-Ontario-Claims. 1Iroquois Indians-Land tenure-Ontario. 1 Six
Nations-Ontario-Grand River Region-History.
Classification: LCC E99.17 .M44 2016 1 DDC 97I.3/3705-dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/ 2015038535

§ This paper meets the requirements of ANSIINISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

For Wendiyo
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Xl

Prologue Xlll

Introduction 3
Internationalizing Indigenous Activism 8
A Glimpse Through the Language Window I4
Settler Colonial Contexts and Narratives I9
Reclaiming "Tradition" 30
1 Repressive Authenticities and Haudenosaunee
Traditionalism Reconsidered 37
Repressive Authenticities and Authenticities Repressed
Authenticity 4I
Project I. Lewis Henry Morgan: Haudenosaunee Traditions
of Confederacy Governance and Sociopolitical Organization 44
Project 2.]. N. B. Hewitt: Authenticating Iroquois Thought 53
Project 3. William Fenton: Authenticating Iroquois Political History 60
Project 4. Authenticating Longhouse Ceremonies: Various Iroquoianists 72

2 Unpacking the T-word : QgwehQwehneha:'

and the Meaning of 'Tradition"
 VIII CONTENTS

3 DehodinigohadJhanyo' ("All of Their Thinking Is Different") :

Surpassing Colonial Scholarship on Iroquois Factionalism 110
Reverse Factionalisms IIO
Constructing Ungovernable Subjects II3
Re-theorizing Factionalism at Grand River I28
Epic Teachings I3°
Haudenosaunee Words I3 2
Haudenosaunee/QgwehQweh Scholarly Theories I3 2
Community Voices I34

4 Hnyo' hneha' ow~na' nihaw~node : ("White Kind Words

and Interpretation") : Academic and Public Responses to
Six Nations Direct Action 148
"When All Hell Breaks Loose at Home": Public Education
in the Midst of the Kanonhstaton Crisis 173
Haudenosaunee Initiatives I74
Settler Initiatives I82

5 Onondaga Beaver Clan Reclamation:

Getting "Our Houses" in Order 187
The Onondaga Beaver Clan and the History of Reclaiming
the Council House at Ohsweken I9°
Dr'ni:s nisa'sgao'de?: Haudenosaunee Clans, the Reconstruction
of Traditional Haudenosaunee Identity, and Nationhood 206
Haudenosaunee Clan Research at Six Nations: Grassroots
and Scholarly Interventions 20 7
Background on Haudenosaunee Clans: Considering Haudenosaunee
Languages and Paradigms 2II
Haudenosaunee Clans: Reinterpreting Contexts of Displacement
and Relevance 2I4
Defying Colonialism Through the Haudenosaunee Clan System 2I8

6 Haudenosaunee Women, Ts~'h Niyogwaehod~: ,

and the Kanonhstaton Reclamation 226
Traditionalist Contours of the Reclamation,
Part I: An Interview with Janie Jamieson 23I
Traditionalist Contours of the Reclamation,
Part 2: All the Women Together 254
 CONTENTS IX

7 Haudenosaunee/Ohswekenhr6: non Interventions

in Settler Colonialism 276
Land 279
Political Difference 28 7
Knowing 299

Epilogue: Hypervisible Settler Colonial Terrains

and Remembering a Haudenosaunee Future 303

Acknowledgments 3I I
Notes ]IS
Bibliography 359
Index 397
 ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES

1. John Mohawk Memorial at National Museum of the Indian 84

2. Thinking Caps, by Shelley Niro 85
3. Modern Day Traditional Teaching, by Graeme MacKay 89
4. TeiotiokwaonhdstonIDeyodyogwar;hdhs:dr;h, by Elizabeth Doxtater 91
5. Time Travels Through Us, by Shelley Niro 95
6. Chief Jacob Thomas, the Jake Thomas Learning Center 100

7. The Great Divide, by Graeme MacKay 124

8. William Johnson and Arnie General at Ohsweken Council
~~~ ~
9. Six Nations women in Ohsweken Council House, 1959 195
10. Six Nations women on Council House steps, 1970 197
II. 2007 press conference at Ohsweken Council House 206

12. Police violence against unarmed Six Nations protestor during

police raid at Douglas Creek Estates 227

13. Police violence against unarmed Six Nations protestor during

police raid at Douglas Creek Estates 228
14. Being pepper-sprayed during the police raid at Douglas
Creek Estates 228
IS. Janie Jamieson at construction site 230
 XII ILLUSTRATIONS

16. Caledonia resident's roadblock 265

17. Six Nations safety barricade across Highway 6 266
18. Wall of women hold the barricade line 266
19. Janie Jamieson, Dawn Smith, and Hazel Hill 274
20. Day I of the Six Nations land reclamation at Douglas
Creek Estates, February 28, 2006
21. Six Nations youth at Six Nations land reclamation protest,

2006 285
22. Six Nations children participate in the reclamation of the
Ohsweken Council House, 1959 288
23. Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs show wampum strings,
1959
24. Haudenosaunee Indigenous Knowledge Guardians
Recognition Ceremony, 20ro 301

MAPS

1. Six Nations of Grand River lands XXI

2. Regional map of Six Nations Reserve XXII

3. Street map of Kanonhstaton/Douglas Creek Estates

construction site XXI11
 PROLOGUE

I N DECEMBER 2005, an open invitation circulated around Six Nations of

the Grand River Reserve Territory, in southern Ontario. The letter's signa-
tories, two young Haudenosaunee women named Dawn Smith and Janie
Jamieson, stated, "A grass roots organization of Six Nations Territory mem-
bers has been formed in order to protect our territories." "Our organization,"
they clarified, "works independently and holds open community meetings.
Our only objectives are land protection and the maintenance oflife for future
generations. We firmly believe we must work together as a community in
order to sustain our objectives."!
The letter alerted community members to the proposed expansions of sev-
eral townships that border and surround the Six Nations Reserve. Jamieson
and Smith had attended nearby meetings of the Haldimand Community
Council, which had just approved a massive residential development project
that would create 250 new housing units a year for the next twenty years. The
areas slated for development, the two women explained, "all lie within the tract
of land identified in the Haldimand Treaty of 1784."2 They further maintained
that representatives from the county had never approached Six Nations to re-
quest permission to purchase the land or renew leases within the tract of Six
Nations lands affirmed by the Haldimand Treaty. Smith and Jamieson empha-
sized that "at no time has Six Nations been compensated for these lands. Not
only are they encroaching upon our territories, but they are doing so illegally,
 XIV PROLOGUE

according to both our laws and theirs." The two women then requested that
community members sign a form letter to help stop the proposed expansions and
encroachments on Six Nations territory. Offering to pick up the signed form let-
ters themselves, Smith and Jamieson concluded the letter by graciously telling
community members, "We would be honored to have you attend" a potluck meal
and meeting they would be hosting later that week. 3
I open this book with a reflection on Smith and Jamieson's letter because it
touches on the many realities of the reclamation movement that these young
women reignited over a decade ago. This Haudenosaunee movement to reclaim
lands and sovereignty in Grand River territory continues even now, and it will
continue to shape Six Nations' future. Smith and Jamieson's letter also provides
insight into the themes foregrounded in this work: the relationship of knowl-
edge to the material conditions of life for Indigenous people in settler states;
the significance of grassroots action to the broader goals of Haudenosaunee
resurgence; and the ways in which-despite enduring excruciating colonial
realities of violence and loss-Haudenosaunee women of today continue to
uphold their responsibilities to Creation. To further understand these themes,
they must be contextualized within the longer-term history of which they are
a part, a history that has also informed the reclamation activities from 2006 to
the present day.
When Smith and Jamieson's letter about massive regional development
plans circulated in December 2005, both women were already deeply involved
in efforts to raise awareness about land encroachment closer to home. The con-
struction of a 132-acre estate home subdivision, Douglas Creek Estates, on the
outskirts of Caledonia, Ontario-which is right at Six Nations' doorstep-had
begun. Smith and Jamieson led peaceful protests, a public education campaign,
and the eventual shutdown and permanent occupation of the construction site,
located at the edge of the current Six Nations Reserve's southeastern bound-
ary, which garnered national attention. From the beginning of their efforts,
both women understood that the subdivision was only the tip of the iceberg.
As plans for much larger development projects on contested and unceded lands
proceeded without any Six Nations community engagement, Smith and Ja-
mieson worked first to draw attention to Six Nations land rights within the
HaldimandlGrand River Tract.
According to the Haldimand Proclamation of 1784, British Crown of-
ficial Sir Fredrick Haldimand pledged to "His Majesty's Faithful Allies" that
lands "six miles deep" on either side of the Grand River-from its mouth to its
 PROLOGUE XV

source-were for the Six Nations and "their posterity to enjoy forever."4 No-
tably, the Grand River is the largest river in southwestern Ontario, running a
length of 300 kilometers (186 miles) . The Grand River, or Haldimand, Tract
refers to this twelve-mile swath, which spans the entire length of the river-al-
most one million acres ofland. Following British defeat in the American Rev-
olution, the well-known Mohawk military leader Joseph Brant (Tyendinaga)
was appointed by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council, and he brokered
the new permanent settlement at Grand River with Haldimand. The British had
promised to replace lost lands when courting the alliance of the Six Nations in
the war effort. After the war, there was no going home: the Sullivan Campaign
from 1779 to 1780 destroyed nearly all the villages of the Onondagas, Cayugas,
and Senecas in the Haudenosaunee's homeland territories (the area that be-
came New York State), and the Treaty of Paris of 1783 surrendered Mohawk
lands to the United States. 5 Brant is said to have been drawn to the willow-
lined banks of the Grand River, especially the way in which the trees come
right to the water's edge, as this reminded him of the Mohawk Valley.6
The Haldimand Proclamation is often viewed by Six Nations as a "treaty,"
given the nation-to-nation basis of the agreement and its stipulation that the
Six Nations were "allies" and not subjects of the British Crown. The proclama-
tion also represents the Crown's legal pledge to honor and uphold Six Nations
land rights. Six Nations had already upheld their end of the agreement, sacrific-
ing over six million acres of their homelands to their alliance with the British.
Other treaties are also significant to the place-based and political contours of
the Six Nations reclamation struggle. Prior to Haldimand and Brant's interac-
tions, the Grand River Tract lands were not unknown to the Haudenosaunee,
and Haudenosaunee land rights in the territory were not unknown to the Brit-
ish. These lands were part of the "Beaver Hunting Grounds," an area of 800
by 400 miles, covering much of present-day southern Ontario. These "Beaver
Hunting Grounds" were acknowledged in the 1701 Nanfan Treaty, through
which the British ensured the Haudenosaunee use of these lands in perpetu-
ity.7 Going further back to the seventeenth century, the Two Row Wampum
and the Silver Covenant Chain Treaties established the political parameters of
mutual recognition of sovereignty and the relationships of coexistence with
European settlers on the basis of peace and friendship.
These early treaties drew upon the same principles that united the Haudeno-
saunee into a Confederacy-under the terms of the Gaya'shni'gowa', the Great
Law of Peace-thousands of years ago. The original Five Nations Confederacy
 XVI PROLOGUE

(comprising the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations)

later expanded to include the Tuscarora at the end of the eighteenth century,
resulting in the Six Nations Confederacy as we know it today. Reflecting the
values outlined by the Gaya'shra'gowa', Six Nations people collectively refer
to themselves as Haudenosaunee, translated to mean "they build the house,"
often interpreted as "the people of the longhouse." This collective designa-
tion is much preferred over the misnomer "Iroquois," given by the European
colonists.
Today the Six Nations community is located on only 4.8 percent (or one-
sixteenth) of their original Grand River Tract lands. This massive land reduc-
tion occurred within only sixty-three years since their arrival at Grand River,
and these losses served to consume-rather than to fortifY-Six Nations fi-
nancial resources and assets. The few areas that the Haudenosaunee agreed to
sell to obtain much-needed capital for resettlement generated small down pay-
ments, but the balances were never paid in full. Overall, the Confederacy pre-
ferred leasing to selling lands. This helped open more areas for farming and also
provided resources to support the reestablished Six Nations villages along the
Grand. The rapid influx of settlers to the region led to encroachment by squat-
ters, and many tenant farmers stopped paying their rents and wanted to own
the farms they occupied. Other tenants simply sold their leased farms to other
settlers and kept the profits for themselves. A series of purported land surren-
ders in the r840s also contributed to the massive reduction of the Six Nations
land base. These surrenders are disputed as fraudulent, and they are easily chal-
lenged in numerous ways. The so-called r84r General Surrender relinquishes
Six Nations rights to the majority of the Grand River Tract lands, including a
substantial portion of land on the south side of the Grand River. It bears the
signatures of only a small delegation of the Six Nations, none of whom were
authorized to surrender land rights by the Confederacy Council. This surrender
was immediately contested by the Six Nations governing body and repudiated
by its signatories. s Another purported surrender from r844 bears the x-marks
of forty-seven signatories. Like all surrenders from this time period, it is highly
unlikely that the signatories could have verified these documents written in
English. This surrender was also never properly "ratified" by the Privy Council,
as was the accepted legal practice at the time. No survey of these newly ac-
quired lands was ever recorded, and many of the transfers from leases to sales
began before the purported surrender even took place. 9
 PROLOGUE XVII

Despite the Confederacy Councils' consistent reminders that the Six Na-
tions were allies and not wards of the Crown, the Crown's paternalistic and
exploitative approach continued. During this time (the mid-1800s), Six Na-
tions saw no return on the investments that the Crown made on their behalf
Six Nations lands and significant money from Six Nations trust accounts were
invested in major development projects-like the Grand River Navigation Com-
pany and the Weiland Canal-without their engagement and without any return
on these investments. Although the new government of Canada was supposed
to uphold the trusteeship of the Crown, it instead attempted to reity legally a
relationship of Indian wardship through the Indian Act of 1876. Canada's violent
deposition of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council and its imposition of the
Indian Act-elected band council system in 1924 continued the government's ef-
forts to subjugate Six Nations.
This governmental interference established a political divide with which the
community has had to contend to this day. This also meant that Canada no
longer had to provide an accounting of Six Nations lands and assets that the
Confederacy Council had been long demanding. Moreover, the Indian Act of
Canada made it illegal for Indians to engage in land claims research, to have
access to the Canadian court system, and to retain legal counsel until the 1970s.
But even with access to legal redress in more recent times, the colonial status
quo continues to be upheld. Nevertheless, generations of Six Nations citizens
from across the community's political spectrum have continued to fight for re-
dress and have successfully researched the theft of their lands and resources.lO
Despite the imposition of the Indian Act-elected band council system and
Canada's withdrawal of recognition of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy as the
governing body of Six Nations, the Confederacy has maintained its sovereignty.
The Six Nations reclamation oflands in 2006 began in the face of this history.
Instead of providing a precise chronology of specific dates and events, I con-
ceptualize the last decade as a series of overlapping and interrelated eras related
to reclamation, negotiations, and resurgence, which can each be best under-
stood by pivoting backward and forward in time. The reclamation era began
with the small-scale potlucks, protests, and the public education campaign of
Jamieson and Smith's "Six Nations Land Claims Awareness Committee."The
most volatile period was from February 28, 2006, when the construction site
was permanently shut down, through April 20, 2006, which saw the erection of
several barricades following a violent police raid. The final highway barricades
 XVIII PROLOGUE

came down in June 2006; still, anti-land claims activists, marches, and rallies
continued to amplifY tensions through the summer and into the fall of that year.
These continued through 2007, and they have been ongoing periodically since
then. In considering this period, I do not examine in this work in any depth the
other land reclamation efforts that occurred in nearby Brantford and Hagers-
villeY I do acknowledge the potential for more land reclamation work as devel-
opment on contested Six Nations land continues.
The negotiations era began in late March 2006, as the Canadian government
initiated talks with Six Nations governing bodies about how to end the occu-
pation of the subdivision site. By mid-April, the elected band council agreed
to let the Confederacy lead the negotiations with the federal and provincial
governments. Following the police raid, and until early June, the government's
main agenda was how to get Six Nations protestors to disengage the barricades.
The government's negotiations with the Confederacy proceeded in earnest
throughout 2007 and 2008 but effectively ended in 2009 when the Canadian
federal government walked away from the table late that year. The band council
withdrew its support of the Confederacy's leadership of the negotiations at that
time.
The era of Haudenosaunee resurgence spans the time period outlined above
and continues to the present day. This period incorporates the grassroots efforts
of Six Nations people in defending Six Nations land and rights, the subdivision
reclamation, the barricade defense, the Haudenosaunee Clanmothers' ongoing
support, the Confederacy's Chiefs' efforts to protect the rights and interests
of the people during negotiations, the talks and negotiations with the federal
and provincial government, the band council's return of the Council House in
Ohsweken in January 2007, and the continued post-negotiation efforts of the
Confederacy to maintain its leadership role in the protection of Six Nations
land rights and resources. Most of these efforts are not new, but have a long
genealogy in Six Nations history. The intellectual contributions of the Haude-
nosaunee came from many people, from the grassroots to the leadership, all
working to advance Haudenosaunee rights and sovereignty in the wake of the
reclamation struggle.
Beyond this prologue, I do not chronicle a conventional historical narra-
tive of the events leading up to and including the reclamation. The histori-
cal narrative I have provided to this point is already unconventional because
it starts with the contributions of two young Haudenosaunee women. I do
not attempt to tell a version of this story in an overarching, authoritative, and
 PROLOGUE XIX

depersonalized way. Indigenous research methodologies encourage us to ac-

knowledge with humility that knowledge is subjective and that a person can
only convey what they know. I tell a story of the 2006 reclamation as I have
come to know it through the lens of my own personal experiences, the time
I invested in supporting this struggle, my relations to and with the Six Na-
tions community, and my academic training. Undoubtedly there are dimen-
sions of this story that I have missed, but I also wanted to take care to fill in the
dimensions that have been overlooked or absent in other accounts, especially
dimensions that bring Haudenosaunee people to the forefront of the struggle.
My research is foregrounded in experiential and enlivened sources, since I saw
firsthand how the mainstream media worked to inflame, distort, and sensation-
alize the conflict. Consequently, I do not rely on media sources to the extent
that other narrators of this story do. So much of what was reported does not
correlate with the realities I witnessed, and even efforts to analyze these biases
are impoverished by lack of experiential engagement.
In this book, I speak as a Haudenosaunee citizen and as a member of the Six
Nations community, although stating this fact requires some important quali-
fications. I do not nor have I ever resided within the current boundaries of the
Six Nations Reserve territory. I grew up in the border town of Caledonia and
on Plank Road, at the corner of Argyle Street and Renfrew, in the house my
parents have owned since I was a baby. Looking back, I jokingly refer to my
little neighborhood as the Doxtdator "rez," as my family was surrounded on all
sides by Doxtdator families from Six Nations, close friends with whom I enjoyed
my time growing up. Since the Haudenosaunee are a matrilineal people, I in-
herit my nation, which is Onondaga, and my clan, which is Beaver, through my
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and on back through time. The Cur-
ley family is my extended family at Six NationsY But again, my identity must
not be misconstrued in any way to mean that I speak for the community or
that I possess any inherent Haudenosaunee cultural expertise, because I do not.
Any knowledge or insights that I impart are the result of being helped by many
generous teachers from the community or from many years' worth of research
and work. My father is non-Native, and for two generations his family has re-
sided in Caledonia, Ontario. Though he is non-Native, my kinship ties to Six
Nations extend through him as well, as his sister, my aunt, also married into the
community and resides there with her family. My youngest sister,Johanne, also
now lives at Six Nations with her family. I acknowledge my kinship relations
to Six Nations as a daughter, an auntie, a niece, a sister, a sister-in-law, a cousin,
 XX PROLOGUE

and now as a mother myself, once again not to display any kind of authority but
to clarity how my ethics and accountability were structured in doing this work.
Six Nations was not the place I was raised, though it has always been part of my
life. It is the place of my people and it will always be important to me.
The story I have chosen to tell about the Six Nations reclamation explores
the themes of knowledge production, Haudenosaunee women, and intellectual
and political resurgence-a resurgence that I witnessed at the barricades and
during the negotiations and that I continue to see today. To me, this is a story
about how a people stood their ground against seemingly insurmountable odds
and against the relentless, often brutal attempts to force their acquiescence. It
is about their adamant refusal to believe that the struggle for the return of their
lands was hopeless. It is about the reclamation of spaces that are both physical
and political, and thus, it is a story about Haudenosaunee people's responsibili-
ties to each other, to the land, and to the coming faces . Most of all, it is about
the reclamation of a place that the Haudenosaunee were never meant to be, and
that place is the future.
 N

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IN DIVIDED UNITY
 INTRODUCTION

I AM SITTING IN THE INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE CENTER at Six Nations

Polytechnic located on the Six Nations Reserve, near Brantford, Ontario.
Eight Haudenosaunee elders-our Knowledge Guardians, as we call
them-and a small group of my fellow Six Nations scholars sit around a long
table.! The Haudenosaunee Knowledge Guardians are engaged in a lively
conversation in the Cayuga language, frequently punctuated by hearty laugh-
ter. I assume that they are talking about some of our Longhouse ceremonies,
because that is what they were discussing when they left off talking in En-
glish. I feel grateful for being able to work with the Knowledge Guardians
on the community-based Haudenosaunee archival repatriation project that
brought us together for this meeting. 2 I also like hearing our elders talk in the
language, even if I cannot understand what they are saying. Eventually, my
brain grows tired of trying to parse the few Cayuga words I know, and my
mind wanders. A poster hanging on the wall catches my attention. It reads:

QgwehQweh are more unique and more sovereign when:

1. We know our Native language
2. We live a lifestyle based on a good mind
3. We live spiritually
4. We are culturally aware
5. We are respectful and practice responsible citizenship
6. We know our history
 4 INTRODUCTION

The poster goes on to state: "We cannot depend on anyone else. It is every
Qgweh<;>weh's responsibility to actively learn and perpetuate our culture, lan-
guages, and traditions."3
Taken together, the ideas articulated on the poster and the events occurring
in the room around me capture what this book is about. This project contrib-
utes to an ongoing dialogue about the intellectual and practical significance
of contemporary expressions of Haudenosaunee traditionalism. To that end, I
have chosen to focus on community-based initiatives that promote Haudeno-
saunee traditionalism and languages at Six Nations of Grand River. I wrote this
book in large part to acknowledge the substantial contributions of many com-
munity members in the continuity of the Haudenosaunee as a distinct nation
of people. I also seek to engage questions of why and how these efforts will play
an important role in our collective future. I present Haudenosaunee tradition-
alism as a crucial enactment of Six Nations sovereignty, both historically and in
the present.
My exploration of traditionalism comes at a particularly important mo-
ment in Six Nations of Grand River history. On February 28, 2006, one of
the longest-running and most widely publicized Native protests in Canadian
history began when two Haudenosaunee women-Janie Jamieson and Dawn
Smith-led an effort to halt the construction of a I32-acre subdivision near
Caledonia, Ontario. These women demanded that the issue of title to these
lands be addressed. While many months of volatility over the subdivision's
occupation ensued, these women's actions ushered in a new era in the history
of the Six Nations of Grand River. In this new era, the dispossession of over
900,000 acres of land, the Canadian government's misappropriation of mil-
lions in Six Nations trust monies, and the forced removal of the traditional
Confederacy governance structure in I924 can never again be ignored. Tak-
ing a longer view, this moment was also the historical culmination of two
centuries in which the Six Nations of Grand River community has fought
for its land rights, nationhood, and sovereignty. Over time, these efforts have
taken on many distinct forms, but they have always drawn on Haudenosaunee
traditionalism.
Over a decade has passed since the subdivision reclamation took place. It
now appears as though much of the early momentum driving the dispute has
declined drastically. Often there is little noticeable presence at the former con-
struction site, once a hub of the frenzied activity of hundreds of protestors dur-
ing the time of the barricades, roadblocks, and showdowns with the neighboring
townsfolk. Tattered flags signifYing Six Nations resistance still fly at the site's
 INTRODUCTION 5

entrance, but the land is now overgrown with ragweed and brush. Negotiations
between the Haudenosaunee and the Canadian government have also ground to
a halt, with each side blaming the other for the impasse. Frustration and cynicism
continue to build among all parties affected by the dispute.
Yet looking past this apparent state of inertia, the controversy continues to
incite monumental changes from which there is no going back. Increasingly,
all levels of the Canadian government are being compelled to reform their re-
lationships to Six Nations in the areas of accountability, compensation, and ju-
risdiction. Developers-not wanting to risk their investments on lands under
contention-now actively seek out consultations with the community. And
although Canada has not officially acknowledged Six Nations' title to the sub-
division property, in the eyes of the community, these lands have already been
reclaimed. Even today, the story of the Haudenosaunee reclamation of their
lands and rights in the Grand River Territory continues to unfold.
The activities around the 2006 conflict that reignited the Six Nations' two-
hundred-year fight to reclaim lands in the Grand River region frame this study.
The current reclamation era offers a productive vantage point from which to
gauge the stakes associated with production of knowledge about the Haude-
nosaunee and to appreciate the weight and significance of the community's
interventions in these areas. Of course, knowledge production about the Haude-
nosaunee also occurs in a multiplicity of spaces that are far removed from the
community. As an enterprise unto itself, externally produced information about
Native people in general and the Iroquois more specifically continues to impact
the lived experiences of our people on a daily basis. This reality is longstanding
and ongoing.
Six Nations' community-based efforts to promote cultural literacy and to pre-
serve traditional knowledge and languages inevitably confront academic rep-
resentations of Haudenosaunee history and culture at the community level.
Haudenosaunee traditionalism is already an internally diverse and emergent
field of inquiry comprising numerous theories, schools of thought, and de-
bates. When academic representations are added to the mix, Haudenosaunee
traditionalist educators must negotiate the complex internal dynamics of the
community and navigate the complications arising from external renderings of
the Haudenosaunee.This task is difficult, to say the least. But for traditionalist
educators, their work is understood to be about nothing less than our survival
as a distinct people. Promoting the continuity of traditional knowledge pro-
vides resistance struggles with a foundation of cultural strength. Knowledge
recovery is also a central component of decolonization. 4
 6 INTRODUCTION

For those from Six Nations, it is no secret that Haudenosaunee tradition-

alism is contested terrain, and its meaning is rigorously debated within the
community. Nevertheless, the internal cultural and intellectual diversity of Six
Nations itself is almost always represented disparagingly by outside sources.
For this reason, I explore how negative notions of the inherent factionalism of
Iroquois people have become inextricably linked to conventional understand-
ings of traditionalism. Given the historical legacy of anthropology and other
forms of colonial scholarship on the cultural representation of Haudenosaunee
peoples, I argue for a rethinking of prevailing notions of "tradition" and "fac-
tionalism." As the public scrutiny of Six Nations factionalism intensifies, and
the integrity of Haudenosaunee traditionalism is increasingly challenged in
the wake of the land reclamation controversy, the hegemonic interpretations
of these two concepts are especially detrimental to the community. I argue that
conventional views of traditionalism and factionalism can be completely recast
when examined through the lens of Haudenosaunee language-based intellec-
tual frameworks .
Necessarily then, this book is about the visionary, future-oriented aspects
of Haudenosaunee traditionalism. It is about how knowledge drawn from epic
teachings, oral traditions, ceremonies, and languages continues to inform Six
Nations' aspirations in the reclamation oflands and rights. It is about the kind
of critical Indigenous studies theorizing that happens on the ground within our
communities, work that is often fraught with debate and dissension. Acknowl-
edging these complexities, I directly engage internal critiques of the potential
for Haudenosaunee traditionalism to be mis-rendered, appropriated, and nar-
rowly institutionalized. In this way, my analysis moves the conversation on
traditionalism beyond romanticism and self-righteousness in order to grapple
with the complicated realities of contemporary nation-building. Nevertheless,
this book provides a strong affirmation of the value and potential of Haude-
nosaunee traditionalism and the work that is done at Six Nations to maintain
it. It is about how Haudenosaunee traditionalism translates into action, how
it denaturalizes the colonial conditions of the present, and how it illuminates
possibilities for the future.s

Some of the most tangible evidence of the reconfiguring capacity of Haudeno-

saunee traditionalism can be seen at the international level. In fact, the entire
 INTRODUCTION 7

international Indigenous rights infrastructure of today owes much to the work

that Six Nations people have done in the name of Haudenosaunee tradition-
alism. 6 In 1923, Levi General, known by the Cayuga Royaner title Deskaheh,
petitioned the League of Nations for recognition of Six Nations sovereignty.
Deskaheh's campaign did not achieve the desired results, but his efforts were
among the first to initiate recognition of Indigenous rights in the international
arena. In the years after his passing, his brother Alexander, upon whom the title
Deskaheh was also bestowed, continued his struggle. In 1930, he travelled to
England to remind the British monarchy of the inherent and unsurrendered
sovereignty of the "People of the Longhouse." Like his brother, he travelled
abroad on a Haudenosaunee passport.
Deskaheh's work inspired an ongoing international effort to assert sov-
ereignty. In 1945, Haudenosaunee delegates attended the San Francisco con-
ference that led to the establishment of the United Nations (UN.; successor
to the League of Nations) and drafting of the first charter. In 1956, the del-
egates participated in opening proceedings for the new UN. headquarters in
New York City. In 1977, a large Haudenosaunee delegation attended a non-
governmental organization (NGO) conference in Geneva that addressed dis-
crimination against Indigenous people. The delegates delivered a powerful se-
ries of position papers eloquently penned by John Mohawk and endorsed by the
Confederacy's Grand Council. The 1980s marked an era of concerted establish-
ment of international Indigenous infrastructures through the World Council of
Indigenous Peoples and the UN. Working Group on Indigenous Populations.?
The Haudenosaunee remained essential contributors at the level of international
organizing: Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons was one of the main architects
of the UN. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the late Tonya
Gonella Frischner, a Snipe clan citizen of the Onondaga Nation, tirelessly served
as the North American regional representative to the United Nations Permanent
Forum on Indigenous Issues for several years.
When Deskaheh went to the League of Nations almost a century ago, the
rights of the thousands of occupied Indigenous nations across the globe re-
mained unrecognized and unarticulated at the international level. We must
understand Deskaheh's efforts as not only an inspiration but also a fundamen-
tal catalyst for the subsequent work toward diplomacy, organizing, and the
building of a collective voice that has now placed Indigenous concerns at the
forefront of international human rights law. In the 1925 radio recording of his
last public speech, Deskaheh explicitly spoke of the "tyranny" of Canadian and
 8 INTRODUCTION

American legislative policies of elimination, their effects on the Haudenosau-

nee's ability to uphold the laws, and the responsibilities that flow from our tra-
ditional teachings:

This story comes straight from Deskaheh, one of the chiefs of the Cayugas. I
am the speaker of the Council of the Six Nations, the oldest League of Nations
now existing. It was founded by Hiawatha. It is a League which is still alive and
intends, as best it can, to defend the rights of the Iroquois to live under their own
laws in their own litde countries now left to them, to worship their Great Spirit
in their own way, and to enjoy the rights which are as surely theirs as the white
man's rights are his own. 8

Deskaheh's campaign for Six Nations sovereignty and international Indig-

enous human rights began as a local grassroots initiative. Many years in the
making, this initiative involved countless hours of community meetings, cor-
respondence, petitioning, government lobbying, fundraising events, and public
and media outreach. 9 Assertions of traditionalism have ensured the Haude-
nosaunee's continued survival as distinct cultural and political nations. Deska-
heh's sense of responsibility to this traditionalism compelled his efforts abroad.
Overriding Canada's jurisdiction by taking the fight for our sovereignty abroad
also helps us to think about the relationship between Haudenosaunee tradi-
tionalism and affect-that is, the reshaping, restructuring, and reconfiguring
potential of traditional knowledge.

INTERNATIONALIZING INDIGENOUS ACTIVISM

In Divided Unity is centrally concerned with how Indigenous knowledge in-

cites transformation and change, a topic that has only been engaged to a lim-
ited degree in anthropology and political science. Revisiting earlier research at
Grand River, anthropologist Annemarie Shimony mentions the Six Nations
population as beneficiaries of the post-imperialist ethos elevating the global
bargaining capacity of third world peoples. In doing so, however, she fails to
acknowledge Six Nations as a major contributor to this international disman-
tling of "ethnocentric" viability.lO Conversely, Julie Cruikshank recognized the
capacity of Tlingit oral narratives to enlarge and rearticulate the more abstract
 INTERNATIONALIZING INDIGENOUS ACTIVISM 9

conceptual narratives of outsiders. The epistemological and historical orien-

tations of these Indigenous narratives add layers of meaning that complicate
Western views. ll
In political science, Franke Wilmer's analysis of the increasing responsiveness
of international communities to Indigenous activism is intriguing. 12 She makes
a substantive case in favor of moral suasion as a means of influence in twentieth-
century global discourse. Indigenous peoples are anomalous in currencies of po-
litical power, because international politics are focused on global military and
economic resources. Wilmer-and more recently, Mohawk political scientist
Taiaiake Alfred-both emphasize that through "the power of protest, direct ac-
tion, and moral suasion, Indigenous activists and advocates have an impressive
record of using symbolic forms of power to influence international actors."13
As Wilmer notes, international recognition of Indigenous rights has been
achieved without any mode of coercive influence on the international allocation
of values, and in the absence of a recognized sovereign status, that enables
even the poorest third world countries to participate in global discourses af-
fecting their futures. 14 Yet despite this lack of recognizable political power, and
given that Indigenous ways of life are perceived as antithetical to the norma-
tive basis on which international institutions rest, Indigenous peoples have
lobbied ceaselessly to ensure their grievances have received international atten-
tion. Wilmer demonstrates the effectiveness of these efforts by tracing the con-
tinuity of the initiatives of the Maori, the Nishga, and the Iroquois in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the present proliferation of inter-
national Indigenous committees, conferences, and organizations. From these
emergent structures come the mandates, the guidelines to monitor and protect
Indigenous rights and interests, the forging of alliances and networks to exert
increasing pressure on nation-states, and the promoting of Indigenous control
over their own economic and political destinies. IS
Such advances derive from local and community-based commitments to
Indigenous knowledge and traditionalism. Acknowledging the effectiveness of
global Indigenous assertions requires recognizing how they connect to local pro-
cesses of cultural representation. Locally, both internal and external constraints
on communities, sociopolitical experiences, and histories all animate how these
processes work. Taiaiake Alfred expresses the effectiveness of using traditional
Haudenosaunee frameworks, emphasizing the Condolence ceremony as an apt
intellectual and political metaphor:
 10 INTRODUCTION

The Condolence ritual pacifies the minds and emboldens the hearts of mourners
by transforming loss into strength. In Rotinohshonni culture, it is the essential
means of recovering wisdom seemingly lost with the passing of a respected elder.
Condolence is the mourning of a family's loss by those who remain strong and
clear-minded. It is a gift promising comfort, recovery of balance, and revival of
spirit to those who are suffering.16

As a metaphor, this ceremony can be extrapolated to engage colonial history

and its effects. Acknowledging loss through colonial disruption, the Condo-
lence ceremony provides a template for perseverance: enacting relational re-
sponsibilities is the integral affective component of recovery and regeneration.
In other words, an important locus of ceremonial power resides in the work
of the "clear-minded" who assist in bringing the bereaved back to this state.
Extending this framework to the greater capacity of Haudenosaunee tradi-
tionalism, Alfred contends that "in a culture deeply respectful of individual au-
tonomy, the only real political power consists in the ability to persuade."171his
power, he explains, is exercised through recognizing that "attitudes that have
sustained our subjugation can no longer be defended" because of the "moral
and intellectual victories [that have been] achieved in Indian country."18
Wilmer also credits the growing international responsiveness to Indigenous
claims and actions to the challenging of dominant ideas that legitimate one
way of life over another and the deconstructing of international values such
as modernization and development. 19 Assertions of Indigenous knowledge ex-
press cultural models that pose alternatives to mainstream ideas. Indigenous
knowledge shapes international responsiveness through attention to language
and meaning as well as through discursive practices. To explain how this works,
Wilmer turns to Foucault:

Linguistic analysis, and predominantly the work of Foucault, claims that the allo-
cation of power is embedded in the language we use to talk about power, its nature
and residence, and its presence in our lives. To attach language to a social event or
experience is to interpret its significance and, in that interpretation to crystallize
or "institutionalize" as it were, the particular concept of power consistent with the
interpretations of the dominant or core group. Thus the use of a term by those
who control its meaning is a means of legitimating the normative beliefs of the
dominant group. Challenges arise on the margin of power among those whose
normative beliefs are fundamentally at odds with those of the dominant group.20
 INTERNATIONALIZING INDIGENOUS ACTIVISM 11

Foucault's work on the moralizing function of persuasive discourse en-

gages language at the lexical level, challenging how meaning and experience is
named, expressed, and related. Such practices harness oratorical skills according
to cultural understandings of relationships and responsibilities, creating ways
of thinking and reasoning that shape perceptions. The emerging strength of In-
digenous discourse and the growing acceptance of Indigenous interpretations
contest the mainstream control of language that perpetuates Indigenous mar-
ginalization. This disrupts the accepted meanings of international values, which
have long remained in the interpretive domain of non-Indigenous elites. 2!
The Haudenosaunee and other Indigenous nations of the world built an
entire international Indigenous human rights infrastructure with no resources
other than words and language. While sociolinguistic studies of the relation-
ship among speech acts, verbal art, and social action provide useful insights on
the role of language as a dynamic, shaping force in the construction of new
realities, works of Native literature and Indigenous literary theory have per-
haps better expressed this transformative capacity. Tohono O'odham poet and
linguist Ofelia Zepeda offers a poignant example in her beautiful poem "Birth
Witness":

I don't bother to explain my parents are illiterate in the English language.

What I really want to tell her is they speak a language much too civil for writing.
It is a language useful for pulling memory from the depths of the earth.
It is useful for praying with the earth and sky.
It is useful for singing songs that pull down the clouds.
It is used for calling rain.
It is useful for speeches and incantations
that pull sickness from the minds and bodies of believers.
It is a language too civil for writing.22

Because Native literature builds on oral tradition, it conveys the creative

power of words and language more clearly than other literary forms. With the
"story" as the basis for Indigenous oral traditions and the transmission of In-
digenous knowledge, the power of storytelling is readily acknowledged. It is
hard not to think about Laguna author Leslie Marmon Sillm's oft-cited ad-
monishment in her touchstone novel, Ceremony, that stories "aren't just enter-
tainment / Don't be fooled / They are all we have, you see / all we have to fight
off / illness and death."23 The same can be said of Cherokee author Thomas
 12 INTRODUCTION

King's reminder, "The truth about stories is that's all we are."24 King recounts
how stories can control our lives, how some can injure while others can heal,
and how important it is for Native people to tell different stories about them-
selves than the ones most frequently told. In a similar vein, Seneca scholar Mi-
shuana Goeman examines how Native women's writing resists and dismantles
colonial geographies, while (re)imagining Indigenous landscapes. 25 Efforts to
de-naturalize colonial claims to Native lands are ongoing in other areas of
Indigenous scholarship, as well as in our communities. In Mohawk anthro-
pologist Dawn Martin-Hili's work, which chronicles the Northern Albertan
Lubicon Cree's violent experience of the environmental degradation of their
lands, her interview with Lubicon Cree elder Edward Laboucon reveals a lu-
dicrous irony: "Why should I wait for these people to tell us we have land?
We are Indians!"26 This is a jarring statement for those who have never ques-
tioned Canadian entitlement to Indigenous territories. Mohawk historian Su-
san Hili shifts the conventional narrative of the Haldimand Tract as a gift to
the Haudenosaunee from Upper Canada Loyalists to one that more accurately
reflects our longstanding relationship to Grand River Territory, a fact acknowl-
edged by the British in the 1701 Nanfan Treaty.27 In 2006, during a local call-in
radio show on land negotiations, an urban-based Six Nations member asked
lead Haudenosaunee negotiator and Confederacy Royaner Allen MacNaugh-
ton whether he had land rights, since he had lived off-reserve all his life. "Of
course you do," MacNaughton replied, "You have to remember that we didn't
draw those lines!"28
Indigenous recognition of the reconfiguring potential of words and lan-
guage is nothing new. The Haudenosaunee's entire cultural history reflects how
the communication of fundamental ideas, values, and principles creates enor-
mous change and transformation. Words, language, and knowledge are under-
stood to have the power to do things and to make things happen. Through
oration, songs, ceremonial speeches, and prayers, change and transformation
happen in numerous ways-by soothing grief and anguish; reducing suffering;
ending violence, conflict, and war; restoring the unity, health, and well-being of
the people; making medicines effective; or renewing the cycle of the seasons.
The Gan<;>h(;myohk (or "Thanksgiving") address provides one example of
how the intellectual power oflanguage can bring reality into being. As the late
Mohawk historian Deborah Doxtator points out:

With its recurring phrase, "be it so, it remains in our minds" brings into con-
crete reality the unity of all minds to the central ordering and structuring of the
 INTERNATIONALIZING INDIGENOUS ACTIVISM 13

universe exemplified in the speech. In this way our minds become one concrete
unity, reflected in and influencing the physical patterns of the natural and un-
natural world, and in effect, indistinguishable from them. 29

Six Nations curator Tom Hill further explains that besides being an admoni-
tion, "netogye:' niyohoto:k ogwa'nigoha" ("be it so it remains in our minds") ar-
ticulates that the natural world is integral to our intellectual process. 30
Onondaga Royaner Jake Edwards offers another example of the power of
words, noting that when the Peacemaker brought the Haudenosaunee the mes-
sage of Peace, known as the Great Law, he persuaded them to bury their weap-
ons of war. According to Edwards, those weapons of war included not only the
war club and tomahawk but also the harsh words of disrespect, greed, and jeal-
ousyY In the broader scope of Haudenosaunee traditionalism and cosmology,
we know that ceremonies do not accomplish what they are meant to without
the recitation of proper words in the requisite speeches and songs. Again, with
the example of the Condolence ceremony, great care is given to the soothing
of a grief-stricken mind. A prescriptive set of words are "read" from wampum
strings to alleviate sorrow and to promote restoration. In this ceremony, the
new leaders that are installed to fill the vacancies left by those who have passed
on must be of "gaihwiyoh" ("good words"). The possession and promotion of
"good words" serves as a key criterion for leadership in traditional Haudeno-
saunee cultureY
From the beginning of the 2006 land reclamation to the present, the non-
Native media and the public fixated on the physical confrontation of the Six
Nations' occupation of the former subdivision construction site. To date, two
books have focused on topics of the perceived injustices visited upon Caledonia
residents and questions regarding the rule oflaw in the region. 33 Several PhD
dissertations and academic journal articles have emphasized the virulent anti-
land claims and anti-Native backlash that arose in response to the reclama-
tion. 34 But there has been no concerted attention paid to how Haudenosaunee
traditionalism has informed both the short and the long trajectories of the rec-
lamation struggle. This oversight has been combined with a more general un-
willingness to engage questions of what the reclamation means for Six Nations.
Also unexamined has been the fact that Six Nations' efforts to reclaim land
in Caledonia, Ontario, have been largely successful-even without Canadian
institutional or legal support and despite the opposition of powerful politi-
cal parties and the majority of non-Native regional residents. There can be no
doubt about the effectiveness of Six Nations direct action not simply to incite
 14 INTRODUCTION

confrontation over land rights and dispossession but also to compel a form
of diplomacy that has long been absent in the Grand River territory. In this,
Haudenosaunee traditionalism enabled the production of a different kind of
knowledge about Six Nations people and the integrity of our rights to chal-
lenge the longstanding status quo. But before we begin to consider the role this
traditionalism played in preventing the subdivision from being built-and in
restructuring economic and political relationships in the region-we first need
to think about the meaning of Haudenosaunee traditionalism. The next section
looks at how this meaning is both clarified and complicated when examined
through the lens of Haudenosaunee language.

A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE LANGUAGE WINDOW

What does tradition mean? What doesn't it mean? These are big questions that
generate a lot of debate in Haudenosaunee country. Most of us vaguely under-
stand "tradition" to be about knowledge and practices rooted in historic Indig-
enous social, spiritual, and cultural ways that are handed down through time.
Or we invest it with some kind of meaning about cultural preservation. Beyond
that, whether raised in conversation or printed in text, the meaning of"tradi-
tion" is often taken for granted and not explained at all.
There are many reasons why the concept of tradition is fraught with con-
tention. The biggest is because "tradition" or "traditional" are Western-applied
concepts that possess their own connotations of time, relevance, authority, and
viability. Tradition is often seen as the opposite of modernity. It is thought to be
rigid and static. Many of these ideas do not seamlessly transpose onto Haude-
nosaunee conceptions of "tradition," despite the frequency with which the term
is evoked by Six Nations people. Our people also have a broad spectrum of
interpretation of "tradition." Clashes among conflicting notions of tradition-
from both outside and within the Six Nations community-are explored in
the coming chapters of this book. Here, I will simply suggest some productive
ways to think about tradition that come from attention to important Haudeno-
saunee linguistic and cultural paradigms.
What insight can Haudenosaunee languages provide that give the concept
of tradition a distinct inflection? This has not been simple for me to figure
out, given that I am not a fluent speaker of any of the six Haudenosaunee lan-
guages. But as a longtime novice Cayuga-language learner and armed with an
 A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE LANGUAGE WINDOW 15

undergraduate minor in linguistics, I have been fortunate to know and inter-

act with a number of fluent speakers from my community and beyond. I have
learned from them that the basis for theorizing Haudenosaunee conceptions of
tradition must come from our languages.
Many of the linguistic characteristics and the cultural etymology of words
in Haudenosaunee languages can inform a Haudenosaunee-specific under-
standing of tradition. Recognition that Haudenosaunee languages come from
the land must factor into these formulations. One word that exemplifies this is
Qgweh<;>wehneha:', a literal translation of which is "the Native way." It is usu-
ally used in reference to Native language. 35 It can also include other things that
make up the unique identity of Qgweh<;>weh people, including the customs,
values, ethics, philosophy, and patterns of behavior inherited from our ances-
tors.36 In a personal interview, the late Snipe clan Confederacy Royaner Jake
Thomas offered insight to further illuminate this connection to land:

If you go back and talk about the time of Creation, when the Creator made man-
kind he made them molded from the earth, that's why we are called Qgwehr/weh.
Qweh is what we are from, the earth. It doesn't matter that we're better than any-
body else. It just means, the Qweh means the real thing from mother earth. That's
what we are??

Here the idea of a Native person as r;weh, meaning real, typical, or genuine, is
expressed as being of the land. Thomas connects the meaning of "original or
real people" (a more literal translation of r;gwehr;weh) with the idea that to be
<;>gweh<;>weh, you have to have come from the earth. In this way, land, Indigene-
ity, and personhood are entwined.
Reinforcing this significance, Akwesasne Mohawk elder Sakokwenionk-
was (Tom Porter) raises other linguistic attributes of Haudenosaunee language
relevant to theorizing Haudenosaunee tradition. He describes the Mohawk
language's ability to project "vivid pictures of action" in three-dimensional Tech-
nicolor.38 Our languages are a multisensory experience, where the auditory and
visual aspects of speaking shape perception, and other senses like smell, taste,
and touch are often aroused. The Mohawk language, Porter contends, is po-
etic and alive. As such, our idea of tradition is infused with vitality. There is
also a richness and depth of meaning that the Western, anglicized concep-
tion is unable to convey. Offering an example from Haudenosaunee funerary
speeches, Porter demonstrates the contrast between the stark notion of "to bury
 16 INTRODUCTION

someone" in English, with tentsitewahwawen:eke thi ron:kwe in Mohawk, which

means "we will take his body and wrap it in the garden blanket of Mother
Earth." The idea of interment is expressed in a much more comforting way,
as something that is accomplished through the relationship to land. 39 The se-
mantic pairing of the word for "people" with the word for "earth" and the direct
correlation of atara as the word for both "clay" and "clan" are other important
examples. 40
I asked Haudenosaunee/Six Nations elder Lottie Keye, who is well-known
for her lifetime dedication to teaching the Cayuga language, to translate ap-
proximations of the word "traditional" for me in the Cayuga language. She
replied:

Traditional knowledge-tsf?'h niY'lgwaehod~: (our ways)

Traditional person-~gweh~'weh nihodido'd~: (real kind person ways)
Haudenosaunee traditions-hodin~hs~'ni: nihodiho'd~: (Longhouse peoples'
ways)

In Mohawk, this is similarly expressed by the word tsi niiankwarih6:ten, the lit-
eral meaning of which is "our kinds of things, issues, business, affairs, ceremony,
etc." Usually, it is simply translated as "our ways."41
Since Haudenosaunee languages are verb based-rather than noun based
like English-the idea of "our ways" is understood to be about action. It is par-
ticipatory and oriented toward practice. The emphasis is placed on doing rather
than on being. The dynamic capacity for movement and transformation is inte-
gral to this as well. As conceptual possibilities for a linguistic understanding of
Haudenosaunee tradition, the language offers an interesting way to think about
our relationship to "our ways." We do not simply hear or encounter our teach-
ings like the GanQh<;lllYQhk (Thanksgiving address) or the Gaya'shragowa'
(Great Law). Instead, the idea is that you become enfolded in them or you
move with them, you flow with them, they wrap around you, and you will be-
come of that environment as an active process of engagement. 42
Many Kanyen'keha:ka speakers point out that the Mohawk language is re-
lational; concepts and words derive their meanings through their relationships
to other concepts and words, rather than in isolation. 43 Prolific with verbs that
signify the potential for adaptability and change, our languages also show us
that the Haudenosaunee are a people of precision. A large and complex rep-
ertoire of pronouns and affixes ensures sharp precision in the meaning of all
words and concepts. The Mohawk language has forty-one pronominal prefixes
 A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE LANGUAGE WINDOW 17

for its verbs. Amber Adams (Six Nations Mohawk) explains that these pro-
nominal prefixes carry within them their own narrative arc, identifYing the ac-
tors and pointing the direction in which the energy between the verb and pro-
noun moves. 44 In Haudenosaunee languages, the verbs also usually require an
aspect affix in attention to a tense affix-and these two affixes strongly inter-
act with one another to convey very specific meanings. According to Tuscarora
linguist Montgomery Hill, the simplest way to conceptualize this relationship
is to work with the "tense" governing the sense of when something occurred
(right now, today, yesterday, last year, or in antiquity) and the "aspect" describ-
ing how something occurred (i.e., the frequency and duration of the verb) .45
Therefore, to say that Haudenosaunee tradition is dynamic is not meant to
exclude that our people are also meticulous about it. It is the combination of
the dynamic and the meticulous that ensures continuity and survival. Specific
inflections of time, space, and gender in Haudenosaunee languages can also be
extended to Haudenosaunee understandings of tradition. Of the many tenses
marking temporality in these languages, as many as three distinct ones make
reference to the future, emphasizing the prevalence of a future consciousness in
Haudenosaunee tradition. 46 As Deborah Doxtator has argued, space and place
are often more important than chronological time in Haudenosaunee concep-
tions of history. This spatial orientation of history exists in virtually all elements
of Haudenosaunee culture, from longhouses to music to language construction. 47
Inflections of gender are important as well. Our languages use feminine
gender pronouns as the unmarked form in both singular and plural cases (i.e.,
a mixed group of men and women is referred to by the female plural pronoun).
In the Cayuga language, all unspecified collective actors-such as those desig-
nated by the pronouns we, they, and they all-are understood to be feminine.
Similarly, in Mohawk, a feminine pronoun-she, one, someone-is used for
persons of unspecified gender and for the collective reference "people."48 These
linguistic attributes signal the inherent significance of Haudenosaunee women,
both to and within Haudenosaunee conceptions of tradition.
The terms "culture" and "tradition" tend to be used interchangeably. Their
meaning is often taken to be synonymous. In a presentation on his contribu-
tions to reviving Haudenosaunee traditionalism at Six Nations, Jake Thomas
took these ideas apart:

A lot of people go to ceremonies and they don't know why they are there. They
come and ask me, "What is this ceremony about?" So I explain what I know and
then they begin to understand. And I think that's what we need is a lot more
 18 INTRODUCTION

understanding in our own culture, or what they so-cali a culture. We don't have
that word. Do some of these people who come from far away have a word for cul-
ture in their language? We call it tsi niyokwario:ten. That's what we are, our Native
ways. That's what covers culture and culture is a way of life.49

According to Thomas, the notion of culture, considered from a simplistic,

antiquated anthropological perspective, is inadequate. "Culture" should not only
be understood as patterns of behavior or the unique attributes of a people but
also as an active, willful process of "making meaning" or intellectual achieve-
ment. 50 To associate Haudenosaunee traditionalism with knowledge and in-
tellectualism reflects a dramatic shift, one that was not always embraced by
academic disciplines like anthropology. As Paul Sillitoe argues, the idea that
Indigenous knowledge constitutes its own field of inquiry questions the exis-
tence and propriety of anthropology. Negative reactions to Indigenous knowl-
edge within the discipline are a product of ingrained epistemic hierarchies privi-
leging Western knowledge and an inability to reconcile notions of unchanging
traditional orders with the idea of knowledge as dynamic and ever changingY
For Six Nations people, Haudenosaunee tradition is Indigenous knowledge. As
such, it is a process of a collective mediation of the seemingly oppositional at-
tributes of continuity, consistency, precision with dynamic and evolving adapt-
ability, and potential.
It is often said that Indigenous traditions require context to be meaningful,
and the language provides that context. Our languages are one of the first places
to turn to in order to discern what tradition means to Six Nations people. With
these orienting priorities in place-land, practice, relationality, action, vitality,
continuity, precision, space, women, and knowledge-we have a firm ground-
ing for thinking further about Haudenosaunee traditionalism.
So what then does it mean to talk about Haudenosaunee traditionalism?
Traditionalism is understood to be a political process. O1JOting Alfred, "Tradi-
tionalism [is] the movement to restore the social, cultural, and political integ-
rity of our communities by restoring ancient models of governance and social
interaction."52 Relatedly, John Mohawk explained it as

a form of social organization based on principles developed by Native peoples

centuries ago. Its goal is the redevelopment of community life and the empower-
ment of land-based peoples in ways that promote [their] survival and provide a
practice of social justice.53
 SETTLER COLONIAL CONTEXTS AND NARRATI V ES 19

The stakes of these efforts are highest for the future generations. To Mohawk,
"traditionalism is not a ghost of the past; it is the wave of the future."54 It is a
form of mobilization even when its motives do not seem to be overtly political,
as in learning the language, learning to braid corn, or learning about the seasonal
cycle of Longhouse ceremonies. Efforts like these promote the renewal of In-
digenous knowledge and languages in both theory and practice. In today's ongo-
ing colonial context, any such work is ultimately a radical political act.
Numerous Indigenous scholars emphasize the significance of accessing our
own Native languages in decolonization and cultural regeneration work. Draw-
ing upon the language provides a way to define the meaning of tradition for
ourselves, instead of having others' definitions imposed upon us. Such efforts
emphasize the enormity of insights that can come from learning a few words
or engaging in the process of language learning-one of the most important
facets of resurgence work. Building upon these understandings of "tradition"
and "traditionalism," based on priorities identified within our languages, we can
examine how the Haudenosaunee use ts<t'h niYQgwaehod<t: (our ways) to theo-
rize our past, present, and our future.

SETTLER COLONIAL CONTEXTS AND NARRATIVES

My involvement in the 2006 land reclamation was as a supporter and a con-

cerned Six Nations citizen, one who also happened to be raised in the town
of Caledonia. I spent the most time at the occupied construction site during
the most volatile period of the struggle, from the police raid of April 20 until
the province of Ontario's purchase of the land was finalized in midsummer.
Subsequently, I became involved in the public awareness and education side
table, one of four specific side-table committees established during the nego-
tiations. Supporting the mandate of the side table by promoting education and
public awareness of Haudenosaunee/Six Nations history, traditions, and cul-
ture, I was among several other community members who assisted in organiz-
ing informational forums and conferences at Six Nations . This was part of a
host of outreach efforts that included assembling panels, teach-ins, and other
resources to educate residents of local municipalities about Six Nations land
rights throughout the Grand River region.
My point in recounting my participation in the reclamation is not to boast
about anything I did during the height of this struggle. I only ever played a
 20 INTRODUCTION

minor role. My involvement pales in comparison to the efforts and sacrifices

of people such as Janie Jamieson, Dawn Smith, Clyde Powless, Allen Mac-
Naughton, Jock Hill, Arnie General, Hazel Hill, the late Dick Hill, Doreen
Silversmith, Skylar Williams, the late "Hodocksay," Floyd and the late Ruby
Montour, Josephine Sandy, Mel Styres, Karen McNaughton, Wes Elliot, and
all of the Clanmothers who were there every day to watch over the people. And
there were countless others. I mean only to clarifY that I am writing from the
vantage point of having been present at the site as the conflict was unfolding.
To date, there have been several analyses written by those working from a dis-
tanced perspective, whose interaction with the struggle was largely at arm's length.
There are an ever-increasing number of articles, dissertations, and books pro-
duced by people who neither visited the region during the conflict nor set foot
on the site during the protest. 55 Relying mainly on the media and materials pro-
cured in the public domain, much of this scholarship offers interpretations that
do not directly attend to Six Nations community-based insights and experiences.
On May 22, 2006, one of the most violent days of the conflict, Six Nations
women of all ages linked arms to form a line stretching across the span of the
highway. As they faced off against hundreds of police officers in riot gear and
more than one thousand angry regional residents, there was no mistaking the
strength of the commitment that these women had to protect both their land
and their people. Despite how the mainstream media played up images of
masked Native warrior "thugs" in its coverage of the reclamation, those on the
ground could see that this was largely a Haudenosaunee women's movement.
During a public talk, lead proponent Janie Jamieson explained that she was
inspired to take action by Six Nations activist and elder Sylvia Sandy. Com-
mitted to honoring Six Nations history and land rights, Sandy held annual
commemorations of the Haldimand Proclamation throughout her life. Recall-
ing Sandy's efforts, Jamieson was inspired to launch a public awareness cam-
paign about Six Nations land rights in the Grand River territory. The need for
such a campaign had become increasingly evident, with two hundred years of
Six Nations land claims still unresolved and with the growing development
in the Grand River Tract region, which included the construction of Douglas
Creek Estates.
Although I did not pay much attention at the time, I grew up with constant
exposure to the contributions of Native women in land rights struggles. My
mother has waged a number of battles against developers in and around the
town of Caledonia. She was often a thorn in their sides and has celebrated a
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drawing-board in one corner and scattered among the casts on the
wall were crayon sketches, merely notes, she explained, tacked up
to preserve her impressions of faces that had interested her.
He was struck by her freedom from pretense; when he touched on
something of which she was ignorant or about which she was
indifferent, she did not scruple to say so. Her imaginative, poetical
side expressed itself with healthy candor and frequent flashes of
girlish enthusiasm. She was wholly natural, refreshingly spontaneous
in speech, with no traces of pedantry or conceit even in discussing
music, in which her training had gone beyond the usual amateur’s
bounds.
“You haven’t been to see Leila yet? She asked you to call, and if you
don’t go she’ll think it’s because of that little unpleasantness on the
river. Leila’s altogether worth while.”
Bruce muttered something about having been very busy. He had
determined never to enter Franklin Mills’s house, and he was
embarrassed by Millicent’s intimation that Leila might take it amiss
that he ignored her invitation.
“Leila’s a real person,” Millicent was saying. “Her great trouble is in
trying to adjust herself to a way of life that doesn’t suit her a little bit.”
“You mean——” he began and paused because he didn’t know at all
what she meant.
“I mean that living in a big house and going to teas and upholding
the dignity of a prominent and wealthy family bores her to distraction.
Her chief trouble is her way of protesting against the kind of life she’s
born to. It’s screamingly funny, but Leila just hates being rich, and
she’s terribly bored at having so much expected of her as her
father’s daughter.”
“His standard, then, is so high?” Bruce ventured, curious as to what
further she might say of her neighbor.
“Oh, Mr. Mills is an interesting man, and he worships Leila; but she
worries and puzzles him. It isn’t just the difference between age and
youth——” She paused, conscious perhaps of the impropriety of
discussing her neighbor with a comparative stranger, but Bruce’s
gravely attentive face prompted her to go on. “He’s one of those
people we meet sometimes who don’t seem—how can one put it?—
they don’t seem quite at ease in the world.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “but—where all the conditions of happiness are
given—money, position, leisure to do as you please—what excuse
has anyone for not finding happiness? You’d conclude that there was
some fundamental defect——”
“And when you reach that conclusion you’re not a bit better off!” she
interrupted. “You’re back where you started. Oh, well!” she said,
satisfied now that she had said quite enough about her neighbor and
regretting that she had mentioned him at all, “it’s too bad happiness
can’t be bought as you buy records to play on a machine and have
nothing to do but wind it up and listen. You have to do a little work
yourself.”
“We’ve all got to play in the band—that’s the idea!” he laughed, and
to escape from the thought of Mills, asked her whether she ever
played for an ignorant heathen like himself.
“You’re probably a stern critic,” she replied, “but I’ll take a chance. If
you don’t mind I’ll try the organ. Papa and Mamma always like me to
play some old pieces for them before they go to bed. Afterwards I’ll
do some other things.”
In a moment she was in the balcony with the knight towering above
her, but he faded into the shadows as she turned off the lights in the
studio below. Bruce’s eyes at once became attentive to her golden
head and clearly limned profile defined by the lamp over the music
rack. She seemed suddenly infinitely remote, caught away into a
world of legendary and elusive things. The first reedy notes of the
organ stole eerily through the room as though they too were evoked
from an unseen world.
The first things she played were a concession to her parents’ taste,
but she threw into them all the sentiment they demanded—the
familiar airs of “Annie Laurie,” “Ben Bolt,” and “Auld Lang Syne.” She
played them without flourishes, probably in deference to the
preferences of the father and mother who were somewhere listening.
To these she added old revival songs—“Beulah Land,” and “Pull for
the Shore”—these also presumably favorites of the unseen auditors.
He watched her aureoled head, the graceful movement of her arms
and shoulders as she gave herself to her task with complete
absorption. She was kind to these parents of hers; possibly it was
through her music that she really communicated with them, met
them on ground of their simpler knowledge and aspirations.
He was conscious presently of the faint ring of a bell, followed by the
murmur of voices in the hall. Someone entered the room and sat
down quietly behind him. Millicent, who had paid no heed to him
since mounting to the organ, was just beginning the Tannhäuser
overture. She followed this with passages from Lohengrin and
Parsifal and classical liturgical music touched with a haunting
mystery....
She came down slowly into the room as though the spell of the
music still held her.
“I shan’t say anything—it might be the wrong word,” he said as he
went to meet her. “But it was beautiful—very beautiful!”
“You were a good listener; I felt that,” she replied.
He had forgotten that there had been another listener until she
smilingly waved her hand to someone behind him.
“So I had two victims—and didn’t know it! Patient sufferers! Mr. Mills,
you and Mr. Storrs have met—I needn’t introduce you a second
time.”
It was Franklin Mills, then, exercising a neighbor’s privilege, who had
arrived in the middle of the recital and taken a seat by the door.
“Mr. Storrs is a perfect listener,” Mills was saying as he shook hands
with Bruce. “He didn’t budge all the time you were playing.”
Mills’s easy, gracious manners, the intimacy implied in his chaffing
tone as he complained that she played better when she didn’t know
he was in the house, irritated Bruce. He had been enjoying himself
so keenly, the girl’s talk had so interested him and he had been so
thrilled and lifted by her music that Mills’s appearance was like a
profanation.
They were all seated now, and Millicent spoke of a book Mills had
sent her which it happened Bruce had read, and she asked his
opinion of it before expressing her own. Very likely Mills was in the
habit of sending her books. She said that she hadn’t cared greatly for
the book—a novel that discussed the labor question. The author
evidently had no solution of his own problem and left the reader in
the air as to his purpose.
“Maybe he only meant to arouse interest—stir people up and leave
the solution to others,” Bruce suggested.
“That was the way I took it,” said Mills. “The fact is, nobody has any
solution short of a complete tearing down of everything. And that,” he
added with a smile and a shrug, “would be very uncomfortable.”
“For us—yes,” Millicent replied quickly. “But a good many of our
millions would probably welcome a chance to begin over again.”
“What with,” Mills demanded, “when everything had been smashed?”
“Oh, they’d be sure to save something out of the wreck!” Millicent
replied.
“Well,” Mills remarked, “I’m hoping the smash won’t come in my day.
I’m too old to go out with a club to fight for food against the mob.”
“You want us to say that you’re not too old,” laughed Millicent; “but
we’re not going to fall into that trap!”
“But—what is going to happen?” asked Bruce.
“Other civilizations!” Mills replied, regarding the young man with an
intent look. “We’ve had a succession of them, and the world’s about
due to slip back into chaos and perhaps emerge again. It’s only the
barbarians who never change; they know they’ll be on top again if
they just wait.”
“What an optimist you are!” cried Millicent. “But you don’t really
believe such things.”
“Of course I do,” Mills answered with a broad smile.
She made it necessary for Bruce to assist her in combating Mills’s
hopeless view of the future, though she bore the main burden of the
opposition herself. Mills’s manner was one of good-natured
indulgence; but Bruce was wondering whether there was not a deep
vein of cynicism in the man. Mills was clever at fencing, and some of
the things he said lightly no doubt expressed real convictions.
Bruce was about to take his leave when Mills with assumed
petulance declared that the fire had been neglected and began
poking the embers. Carefully putting the poker and tongs back in the
rack, he lounged toward the door, paused halfway and said good-
night formally, bowing first to one and then the other.
“Come in again sometime!” Millicent called after him.
“Is that impudence?” Mills replied, reappearing from the hall with his
coat and hat. In a moment the door closed and they heard the sound
of his stick on the walk outside.
“He’s always like that,” Millicent remarked after a moment of silence.
“It’s understood that he may come in when I’m playing and leave
when he pleases. Sometimes when I’m at the organ he sits for an
hour without my knowing he’s here. It made me nervous at first—just
remembering that he might be here; but I got over that when I found
that he really enjoyed the playing. I’m sorry he didn’t stay longer and
really talk; he wasn’t at his best tonight.”
Bruce made the merest murmur of assent, but something in Mills’s
quizzical, mocking tone, the very manner of his entrance into the
house, affected him disagreeably.
He realized that he was staying too long for a first call, but he
lingered until they had regained the cheery note with which the
evening began, and said good night.

II
When he reached the street Bruce decided to walk the mile that lay
between the Hardens’ and his apartment. His second meeting with
Franklin Mills had left his mind in tumult. He was again beset by an
impulse to flee from the town, but this he fought and vanquished.
Happiness and peace were not to be won by flight. In his soldiering
he had never feared bodily injury, and at times when he had
speculated as to the existence of a soul he had decided that if he
possessed such a thing he would not suffer it to play the coward. But
this unexpected meeting at the Hardens’, which was likely to be
repeated if he continued his visits to the house, had shaken his
nerve more than he liked to believe possible. Millicent evidently
admired Mills, sympathized with him in his loneliness, was flattered
perhaps by his visits to her home in search of solace and cheer, or
whatever it was Mills sought.
The sky was overcast and a keen autumn wind whipped the
overhanging maples as Bruce strode homeward with head bent, his
hands thrust deep into the pockets of his overcoat. He hummed and
whistled phrases of the Parsifal, with his thoughts playing about
Millicent’s head as she had sat at the organ with the knight keeping
watch above her. After all, it was through beautiful things, man-made
and God-made, as his mother had taught him, that life found its
highest realizations. In this idea there was an infinite stimulus.
Millicent had found for herself this clue to happiness and was a
radiant proof of its efficacy. It had been a privilege to see her in her
own house, to enjoy contact with her questioning, meditative mind,
and to lose himself in her entrancing music.
The street was deserted and only a few of the houses he passed
showed lights. Bruce experienced again, as often in his night tramps
during the year of his exile, a happy sense of isolation. He was so
completely absorbed in his thoughts that he was unaware of the
propinquity of another pedestrian who was slowly approaching as
though as unheedful as he of the driving wind and the first fitful
patter of rain. They passed so close that their arms touched. Both
turned, staring blankly in the light of the street lamps, and muttered
confused apologies.
“Oh, Storrs!” Franklin Mills exclaimed, bending his head against the
wind.
“Sorry to have bumped into you, sir,” Bruce replied, and feeling that
nothing more was required of him, he was about to go on, but Mills
said quickly:
“We’re in for a hard rain. Come back to my house—it’s only half a
dozen blocks—and I’ll send you home.”
There was something of kindly peremptoriness in his tone, and
Bruce, at a loss for words with which to refuse, followed, thinking that
he would walk a block to meet the demands of courtesy and turn
back. Mills, forging ahead rapidly, complained good-naturedly of the
weather.
“I frequently prowl around at night,” he explained; “I sleep better
afterwards.”
“I like a night walk myself,” Bruce replied.
“Not afraid of hold-ups? I was relieved to find it was you I ran into.
My daughter says I’m bound to get sandbagged some night.”
At the end of the first block both were obliged to battle against the
wind, which now drove the rain in furious gusts through the
intersecting streets. In grasping his hat, Mills dropped his stick, and
after picking it up, Bruce took hold of his arm for their greater ease in
keeping together. It would, he decided, be an ungenerous desertion
to leave him now, and so they arrived after much buffeting at Mills’s
door.
“That’s a young hurricane,” said Mills as he let himself in. “When
you’ve dried out a bit I’ll send you on in my car.”
In response to his ring a manservant appeared and carried away
their hats and overcoats to be dried. Mills at once led the way
upstairs to the library, where a fire had been kindled, probably
against the master’s return in the storm.
“Sit close and put your feet to the blaze. I think a hot drink would be
a help.”
Hot water and Scotch were brought and Mills laughingly assured
Bruce that he needn’t be afraid of the liquor.
“I had it long before Prohibition. Of course, everybody has to say
that!”
In his wildest speculations as to possible meetings with his father,
Bruce had imagined nothing like this. He was not only in Franklin
Mills’s house, but the man was graciously ministering to his comfort.
And Bruce, with every desire to resist, to refuse these courteous
offices, was meekly submitting. Mills, talking easily, with legs
stretched to the fire, sipped his drink contentedly while the storm
beat with mounting fury round the house.
“I think my son said you had been in the army; I should say that the
experience hadn’t done you any harm,” Mills remarked in his
pleasant voice.
“Quite the contrary, sir. The knocking about I got did me good.”
“I envy you young fellows the experience; it was a ghastly business,
but it must mean a lot in a man’s life to have gone through it.”
In response to a direct question Bruce stated concisely the nature of
his service. His colorless recital of the bare record brought a smile to
Mills’s face.
“You’re like all the young fellows I’ve talked with—modest, even a
little indifferent about it. I think if I’d been over there I should do some
bragging!”
Still bewildered to find himself at Mills’s fireside, Bruce was
wondering how soon he could leave; but Mills talked on in leisurely
fashion of the phenomenal growth of the town and the opportunities
it offered to young men. Bruce was ashamed of himself for not being
more responsive; but Mills seemed content to ramble on, though
carefully attentive to the occasional remarks Bruce roused himself to
make. Bruce, with ample opportunity, observed Mills’s ways—little
tricks of speech, the manner in which he smoked—lazily blowing
rings at intervals and watching them waver and break—an
occasional quick lifting of his well-kept hand to his forehead.
It was after they had been together for half an hour that Bruce noted
that Mills, after meeting his gaze, would lift his eyes and look intently
at something on the wall over the bookcases—something
immediately behind Bruce and out of the range of his vision. It
seemed not to be the unseeing stare of inattention; but whatever it
was, it brought a look of deepening perplexity—almost of alarm—to
Mills’s face. Bruce began to find this upward glance disconcerting,
and evidently aware that his visitor was conscious of it, Mills got up
and, with the pretence of offering his guest another cigarette,
reseated himself in a different position.
“I must run along,” said Bruce presently. “The storm is letting up. I
can easily foot it home.”
“Not at all! After keeping you till midnight I’ll certainly not send you
out to get another wetting. There’s still quite a splash on the
windows.”
He rang for the car before going downstairs, and while he was
waiting for the chauffeur to answer on the garage extension of the
house telephone, Bruce, from the fireplace, saw that it must have
been a portrait—one of a number ranged along the wall—that had
invited Mills’s gaze so frequently. It was the portrait of a young man,
the work of a painstaking if not a brilliant artist. The clean-shaven
face, the long, thick, curly brown hair, and the flowing scarf knotted
under a high turn-over collar combined in an effect of quaintness.
There was something oddly familiar in the young man’s
countenance. In the few seconds that Mills’s back was turned Bruce
found himself studying it, wondering what there was about it that
teased his memory—what other brow and eyes and clean-cut, firm
mouth he had ever seen were like those of the young man who was
looking down at him from Franklin Mills’s wall. And then it dawned
upon him that the face was like his own—might, indeed, with a
different arrangement of the hair, a softening of certain lines, pass for
a portrait of himself.
Mills, turning from the telephone, remarked that the car was on the
way.
“Ah!” he added quickly, seeing Bruce’s attention fixed on the portrait,
“my father, at about thirty-five. There’s nothing of me there; I take
after my mother’s side of the house. Father was taller than I and his
features were cleaner cut. He died twenty years ago. I’ve always
thought him a fine American type. Those other——”
Bruce lent polite attention to Mills’s comments on the other portraits,
one representing his maternal grandfather and another a great-uncle
who had been killed in the Civil War. When they reached the lower
floor Mills opened the door of a reception room and turned on the
frame lights about a full-length portrait of a lady in evening dress.
“That is Mrs. Mills,” he said, “and an excellent likeness.”
He spoke in sophisticated terms of American portraiture as they went
to the hall where the servant was waiting with Bruce’s hat and coat.
A limousine was in the porte-cochère, and Mills stood on the steps
until Bruce got in.
“I thank you very much, Mr. Mills,” Bruce said, taking the hand Mills
extended.
“Oh, I owe you the thanks! I hope to see you again very soon!”
Mills on his way to his room found himself clinging to the stair rail.
When he had closed the door he drew his hand slowly across his
eyes. He had spoken with Marian Storrs’s son and the young man by
an irony of nature had the countenance, the high-bred air of Franklin
Mills III. It was astounding, this skipping for a generation of a type! It
seemed to Mills, after he had turned off the lights, that his father’s
eyes—the eyes of young Storrs—were still fixed upon him with a
disconcerting gravity.
 CHAPTER SEVEN
I
In the fortnight following his encounter with Mills at the Hardens’, and
the later meeting that same night in the storm, Bruce had thrown
himself with fierce determination into his work. There must be no
repetitions of such meetings; they added to his self-consciousness,
made him ill at ease even when walking the streets in which at a turn
of any corner he might run into Mills.
He had never known that he had a nerve in his body, but now he
was aware of disturbing sensations, inability to concentrate on his
work, even a tremor of the hands as he bent over his drawing-board.
His abrupt change from the open road to an office in some measure
accounted for this and he began going to a public golf links on
Saturday afternoons and Sundays, and against the coming of winter
he had his name proposed for membership in an athletic club.
He avoided going anywhere that might bring him again in contact
with the man he believed to be his father. Shepherd Mills he ran into
at the University Club now and then, and he was not a little ashamed
of himself for repelling the young man’s friendly overtures. Shepherd,
evidently feeling that he must in some way explain his silence about
the clubhouse, for which Bruce had made tentative sketches, spoke
of the scheme one day as a matter he was obliged to defer for the
present.
“It’s a little late in the season to begin; and father’s doubtful about it
—thinks it might cause feeling among the men in other concerns. I
hadn’t thought of that aspect of the matter——”
Shepherd paused and frowned as he waited for Bruce to offer some
comment on the abandonment of the project. It was none of Bruce’s
affair, but he surmised that the young man had been keenly
disappointed by his father’s refusal.
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter!” Bruce remarked as though it were
merely a professional matter of no great importance. But as he left
Shepherd he thought intently about the relations of the father and
son. They were utterly irreconcilable natures. Having met Franklin
Mills, sat at his fireside, noted with full understanding the man’s
enjoyment of ease and luxury, it was not difficult to understand his
lack of sympathy with Shepherd’s radical tendencies. Piecing
together what he had heard about Mills from Henderson and
Millicent Harden with his own estimate, Bruce was confident that
whatever else Franklin Mills might be he was no altruist.
After he left Shepherd Bruce was sorry that he had been so brusque.
He might at least have expressed his sympathy with the young
man’s wish to do something to promote the happiness of his
workmen. The vitality so evident in Franklin Mills’s vigorous figure,
and his perfect poise, made Shepherd appear almost ridiculous in
contrast.
Bruce noted that the other young men about the club did not treat
Shepherd quite as one of themselves. When Shepherd sat at the big
round table in the grill he would listen to the ironic give and take of
the others with a pathetic eagerness to share in their good
fellowship, but unable to make himself quite one of them. This might
have been due, Bruce thought, to the anxiety of Shepherd’s
contemporaries—young fellows he had grown up with—to show their
indifference to the fact that he was the son of the richest man in
town. Or they felt, perhaps, that Shepherd was not equal to his
opportunities. Clearly, however, no one ever had occasion to refer to
Shepherd Mills as the typical young scion of a wealthy family whose
evil ways were bound to land him in the poorhouse or the gutter.
In other circumstances Bruce would have felt moved to make a
friend of Shepherd, but the fact that they were of the same blood
haunted him like a nightmare.

II
As the days went by, Bruce fell prey to a mood common to sensitive
men in which he craved talk with a woman—a woman of
understanding. It was Saturday and the office closed at noon. He
would ask Millicent to share his freedom in a drive into the country;
and without giving himself time to debate the matter, he made haste
to call her on the telephone.
Her voice responded cheerily. Leila had just broken an engagement
with her for golf and wouldn’t he play? When he explained that he
wasn’t a member of a club and the best he could do for her would be
to take her to a public course, she declared that he must be her
guest. The point was too trivial for discussion; the sooner they
started the better, and so two o’clock found them both with a good
initial drive on the Faraway course.
“Long drives mean long talks,” she said. “We begin at least with the
respect of our caddies. You’ll never guess what I was doing when
you called up!”
“At the organ, or in the studio putting a nose on somebody?”
“Wrong! I was planting tulip bulbs. This was a day when I couldn’t
have played a note or touched clay to save my life. Ever have such
fits?”
“I certainly do,” replied Bruce.
Each time he saw her she was a little different—today he was finding
her different indeed from the girl who had played for him, and yet not
the girl of his adventure on the river or the Millicent he had met at the
Country Club party. There was a charm in her variableness, perhaps
because of her habitual sincerity and instinctive kindness. He waited
for her to putt and rolled his own ball into the cup.
“Sometimes I see things black; and then again there does appear to
be blue sky,” he said.
“Yes; but that’s not a serious symptom. If we didn’t have those little
mental experiences we wouldn’t be interesting to ourselves!”
“Great Scott! Must we be interesting to ourselves?”
“Absolutely!”
“But when I’m down in the mouth I don’t care whether I’m interesting
or not!”
“Nothing in it! Life’s full of things to do—you know that! I believe
you’re just trying to psychoanalyze me!”
“I swear I’m not! I was in the depths this morning; that’s why I called
you up!”
“Now——” She carefully measured a short approach and played it
neatly. “Oh, you didn’t want to see me socially, so to speak; you just
wanted someone to tell your troubles to! Is that a back-handed
compliment?”
“Rather a confession—do you hate it?”
“No—I rather like that.”
With an artistic eye she watched him drive a long low ball with his
brassie. His tall figure, the free play of arms and shoulders, his
boyish smile when she praised the shot, contributed to a new
impression of him. He appeared younger than the night he called on
her, when she had thought him diffident, old-fashioned and stiffly
formal.
As they walked over the turf with a misty drizzle wetting their faces
fitfully it seemed to both that their acquaintance had just begun.
When he asked if she didn’t want to quit she protested that she was
dressed for any weather. It was unnecessary to accommodate
himself to her in any way; she walked as rapidly as he; when she
sliced her ball into the rough she bade him not follow her, and when
she had gotten into the course again she ran to join him, as though
eager not to break the thread of their talk. The thing she was doing
at a given moment was, he judged, the one thing in the world that
interested her. The wind rose presently and blew the mist away and
there was promise of a clearing sky.
“You’ve brought the sun back!” he exclaimed. “Something told me
you had influence with the weather.”
“I haven’t invoked any of my gods today; so it’s just happened.”
“Your gods! You speak as though you had a list!”
“Good gracious! You promised me once not to pick me up and make
me explain myself.”
“Then I apologize. I can see that it isn’t fair to make a goddess
explain her own divinity.”
“Oh-o-o-o,” she mocked him. “You get zero for that!”
She was walking along with her hands thrust into the pockets of her
sweater, the brim of her small sport hat turned up above her face.
“But seriously,” she went on, “out of doors is the best place to think
of God. The churches make religion seem so complicated. We can’t
believe in a God we can’t imagine. Where there’s sky and grass it’s
all so much simpler. The only God I can feel is a spirit hovering all
about, watching and loving us—the God of the Blue Horizons. I can’t
think of Him as a being whose name must be whispered as children
whisper of terrifying things in the dark.”
“The God of the Blue Horizons?” He repeated the phrase slowly.
“Yes; the world has had its day of fear—anything that lifts our eyes to
the blue sky is good—really gives us, I suppose, a sense of the
reality of God....”
They had encountered few other players, but a foursome was now
approaching them where the lines of the course paralleled.
“Constance Mills and George Whitford; I don’t know the others,” said
Millicent.
Mrs. Mills waved her hand and started toward them, looking very fit
in a smart sport suit. Idly twirling her driver, she had hardly the air of
a zealous golfer.
“Ah!” she exclaimed. “Aren’t we the brave ones? Scotch blood! Not
afraid of a little moisture. Mr. Storrs! I know now why you’ve never
been to see me—you’re better occupied. It’s dreadful to be an old
married woman. You see what happens, Millicent! I warn you
solemnly against marriage. Yes, George—I’m coming. Nice to meet
you, even by chance, Mr. Storrs. By-by, Millie.”
“You’ve displeased her ladyship,” Millicent remarked. “You ought to
go to see her.”
“I haven’t felt strongly moved,” Bruce replied.
“She doesn’t like being ignored. Of course nobody does, but Mrs.
Mills demands to be amused.”
“Is she being amused now?” Bruce asked.
“I wish Leila could have heard that!”
“Doesn’t Leila like her sister-in-law?”
“Yes, of course she does, but Constance is called the most beautiful
and the best dressed woman in town and the admiration she gets
goes to her head a little bit. George Whitford seems to admire her
tremendously. Leila has a sense of humor that sees right through
Constance’s poses.”
“Doesn’t Leila pose just a little herself?”
“You might say that she does. Just now she’s affecting the fast
young person pose; but I think she’s about through with it. She’s
really the finest girl alive, but she kids herself with the idea that she’s
an awful devil. Her whole crowd are affected by the same bug.”
“I rather guessed that,” said Bruce. “Let me see—was that five for
you?”

III
When they reached the clubhouse Millicent proposed that they go
home for the tea which alone could fittingly conclude the afternoon.
The moment they entered the Harden hall she lifted her arms
dramatically.
“Jumbles!” she cried in a mockery of delight. “Mother has been
making jumbles! Come straight to the kitchen!”
In the kitchen they found Mrs. Harden, her ample figure enveloped in
a gingham apron of bright yellow checks that seemed to fill the
immaculate white kitchen with color. Bruce was a little dismayed by
his sudden precipitation into the culinary department of the
establishment. Millicent began piling a plate with warm jumbles; a
maid appeared and began getting the tea things ready. Mrs. Harden,
her face aglow from its recent proximity to the gas range, explained
to Bruce that it was the cook’s afternoon out and at such times she
always liked to cook something just to keep her hand in. She was
proud of the kitchen with its white-tiled walls and flooring and
glittering utensils. The library and the organ belonged to Millie, she
said, but Doctor Harden had given her free swing to satisfy her own
craving for an up-to-date kitchen.
Bruce’s heart warmed under these revelations of the domestic
sanctuary. Mrs. Harden’s motherliness seemed to embrace the world
and her humor and sturdy common sense were strongly evident.
She regaled Bruce with a story of a combat she had lately enjoyed
with a plumber. She warned him that if he would succeed as an
architect he must be firm with plumbers.
Alone in the living-room with their tea, Millicent and Bruce continued
to find much to discuss. She was gay and serious by turns, made
him talk of himself, and finding that this evidently was distasteful to
him, she led the way back to impersonal things again.
“Why go when there will be dinner here pretty soon?” she asked
when he rose.
“Because I want to come back sometime! I want some more jumbles!
It’s been a great afternoon for me. I do like the atmosphere of this
house—kitchen and everything. And the outdoors was fine—and you
——”
“I hoped you’d remember I was part of the scenery!”
“I couldn’t forget it if I wanted to—and I don’t! Do you suppose we
could do it all over again—sometime when you’re not terribly busy?”
“Oh, I’ll try to bear another afternoon with you!”
“Or we might do a theater or a movie?”
“Even that is possible.”
He didn’t know that she was exerting herself to send him away
cheerful. When he said soberly, his hand on the door, “You don’t
know how much you’ve helped me,” she held up her finger
warningly.
“Not so serious! Always cheerful!—that’s the watchword!”
“All right! You may have to say that pretty often.”
Her light laugh, charged with friendliness, followed him down the
steps. She had made him forget himself, lifted him several times to
heights he had never known before. He was sorry that he had not
asked her further about the faith to which she had confessed, her
God of the Blue Horizons. The young women he had known were
not given to such utterances,—certainly not while playing very
creditable golf! Her phrase added majesty to the universe, made the
invisible God intelligible and credible. He felt that he could never
again look at the heavens without recalling that phrase of hers. It
wakened in him the sense of a need that he had never known
before. It was as if she had interpreted some baffling passage in a
mysterious book and clarified it. He must see her again; yes, very
often he must see her.
But on his way home a dark thought crossed his mind: “What would
Millicent say if she knew?”
 CHAPTER EIGHT
I
Two weeks later Bud Henderson sought Bruce at Freeman’s office.
Bruce looked up from his desk with a frown that cleared as he
recognized his friend. With his cap pushed back on his head and
buttoned up in a long ulster, Henderson eyed him stolidly and
demanded to know what he was doing.
“Going over some specifications; I might say I’m at work, if you knew
what the word means.”
“Thanks for the compliment, but it’s time to quit,” Henderson replied,
taking a cigarette from a package on Bruce’s desk. “I happen to
know your boss is playing handball this moment at the Athletic and
he’ll never know you’ve skipped. I haven’t liked a certain look in your
eye lately. You’re sticking too close to your job. Bill is pleased to
death with your work, so you haven’t a thing to worry about. Get your
bonnet and we’ll go out and see what we can stir up.”
“I’m in a frame of mind to be tempted. But I ought to finish this stuff.”
“Don’t be silly,” replied Bud, who was prowling about the room
viewing the framed plans and drawings on the walls, peering into
cabinets, unrolling blue prints merely to fling them aside with a groan
of disgust.
“My God! It doesn’t seem possible that Bill Freeman would put his
name to such things!”
“Don’t forget this is a private office, Mr. Henderson. What’s agitating
your bean?”
“Thought I’d run you up to the art institute to look at some Finnish
work they’re showing. Perhaps it’s Hottentotish; or maybe it’s Eskimo
art. We’ve got to keep in touch with the world art movement.”
Henderson yawned.
“Try again; I pant for real excitement,” said Bruce, who was
wondering whether his friend really had noticed signs of his recent
worry. Henderson, apparently intent upon a volume of prints of
English country houses, swung round as Bruce, in putting on his
overcoat, knocked over a chair. He crossed the room and laid his
hands on Bruce’s broad shoulders.
“I say, old top; this will never do! You’re nervous; you’re damned
nervous. Knocking over chairs—and you with the finest body known
in modern times! I watched you the other day eating your lunch all
alone at the club—you didn’t know I was looking at you. Your
expression couldn’t be accounted for even by that bum club lunch.
Now if it’s money——”
“Nothing of the kind, Bud!” Bruce protested. “You’ll have me scared
in a minute. There’s nothing the matter with me. I’m all right; I just
have to get readjusted to a new way of living; that’s all.”
“Well, as you don’t thrill to the idea of viewing works of art, I’ll tell you
what I’m really here for. I’m luring you away to sip tea with a widow!”
“A widow! Where do you get the idea that I’m a consoler of widows?”
“This one doesn’t need consoling! Helen Torrence is the name; relict
of the late James B. deceased. She’s been away ever since you lit in
our midst and just got home. About our age and not painful to look
at. Jim Torrence was a good fifty when he met her, at White Sulphur
or some such seat of opulence, and proudly brought her home for
local inspection. The gossips forcibly removed most of her moral
character, just on suspicion, you understand—but James B.’s money
had a soothing effect and she got one foot inside our social door
before he passed hence three years ago and left her the boodle he
got from his first wife. Helen’s a good scout. It struck me all of a heap
about an hour ago that she’s just the girl to cheer you up. I was just
kidding about the art stuff. I telephoned Helen I was coming, so
we’re all set.”